May

The Canadian Medical Protective Association has had an opportunity to review the article by Dr Sedergreen that appeared in the September 2000 issue of the BC Medical Journal ("Massage Therapy—A Review" [BCMJ 2000;42(7):342-344]), as well as letters that were published in the December 2000 issue of the Journal written by the president of the College of Massage Therapists of British Columbia [BCMJ 2000;42(10):452] and Dr Sedergreen [BCMJ 2000;42(10)454].

In the April 2001 issue of the BC Medical Journal, five papers were published on Parkinson’s disease from the viewpoint of research studies directed to understanding the cause and mechanism of cell death. The topics included etiology, epidemiology, pathogenesis, pathology, and imaging. In this issue, the theme of Parkinson’s disease is continued, but the papers are more clinical.

We all experience occasional interludes in our daily unplottable travels into chaos when we retreat briefly into the land of alpha waves. Some of my recent self-hypnotic states have been even more obscure than the usual bizarre, unconnected stuff my subconscious regularly dredges up. I'm not sure if this is a sign of my impending central nervous system Armageddon or that the universe is suddenly bombarding us with some new quirky, famtosecond energy pulses.

A few months ago I got a letter from the College. If you are like me you get a panic attack when even the College Quarterly arrives, but this time it was the one. By the grace of God more than good judgment, I have managed to practise blemish free for 30 years, but this was a "letter of enquiry." A patient of mine had died in a house fire and a concerned friend had written to the College expressing the conviction that her friend had died because her GP and I had oversedated her, making her unable to respond to the fire caused by the deep fat she had left overheating on the stove.

The world of bioethics is at the intersection of regulation, societal values, and clinical practice. The Internet, with its ability to link individuals of varying technical aptitudes across disciplines and between organizations, is proving a useful tool for ethicists and those concerned with ethical issues in medicine. A review of sites for bioethics reveals continuing rapid change on the Internet. Those searching for bioethics information will have to use a new interface in 6 months.